1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a system for managing regulated entities using a database of information on the regulated entities and, more particularly, to a system for administering environmental protection laws and regulations using a database system architecture having integrated data management.
2. Description of the Related Art
In today's society, there are many government regulatory agencies at the federal, state and local levels. One of the most complex areas of regulation is environmental protection, where numerous laws have been passed and regulations promulgated affecting many kinds of activities of individuals and organizations.
Historically, environmental regulatory agencies have been organized into units that implement separate and distinct regulatory programs, e.g., air pollution control, surface water pollution control, hazardous waste disposal control, etc. In most agencies, each of these program offices has been responsible for meeting its own data management needs, including maintaining information describing each of its regulated entities and each of its regulatory activities, e.g., developing permits, conducting site inspections, and taking enforcement actions with respect to the regulated entities.
Most environmental agencies have not established standards for data system design, thereby allowing program-specific data systems to be created entirely independently of each other, often without any reference to data management methods used elsewhere in the agency. Similar situations can be found in other types of regulatory agencies. One of the results of this splintering of responsibility for data management is that insufficient funds and technical expertise necessary for sophisticated systems have been applied to data management at regulatory agencies, resulting in a patchwork of databases developed and maintained by staff who are not computer professionals. This situation in turn severely hampers the ability of agencies to establish and enforce cross-program consistency in policies and work processes, and it makes it very difficult to assemble all available information on a regulated entity.